Art or rubbish?

Made me smile too ga

I always think of 'The Emperors New Clothes' story.
Everyone (ie those who give it value) thinks it's rubbish but no one dare say so !

I think the cleaner had correctly assessed their 'value' !

Love it GA
Next time I ask the GC to pick up their rubbish they might claim it's an installation

But surely the very act of commodifying the mop, the bucket and the dustcart is, in itself, a profound statement about the interface between performativity and 'maker'. All media need interaction to become media, but here, it is truly an an act of performance. The fluidity of this reading may seem random but given sufficient encounters in a more densly constructed hypertext we are plunged or perhaps nomadically voyaging through the narrative spaces of the hygienic world.

You took the words out of my mouth MiceElf

I know an artist whose usual work is very nice, varied in appearance but all attractive and stylish.

But his most lucrative sideline is producing HUGE abstract acrylic canvases, dashed off in half-an-hour each on commission from organisations which want a "modern" art work for their foyers. He gets thousands for each.

He recently had my grandchildren doing (smaller!) versions. They are indistinguishable from his corporate masterpieces!

Elegran I also have a friend who paints 'abstract' pieces and gets paid very well for them (her pieces often appear on the walls of 'posh' houses in soaps apparently). She has a very simple technique that yes, even I could manage.

Is Phoenix reading this? She could invest in a set of acrylic paints and a few big canvases and become a millionaire!

Wonderful! I was recently in the Gallery of Modern Art in Sydney with DD. We went in one door, up in the lift, down the escalator and out again. We reckoned we could do better with the kids' Lego and skateboards with the help of a few old tin cans and a bucket of sand. The best bit about the whole experience was the air conditioning.

I don't necessarily understand it & don't respond to all of it positively (any more than I do traditional art) but I love experiencing modern art - it keeps me challenged & awake to different ways of being & seeing. If this cleaner worked in the gallery I don't believe he/she didn't know what they were doing. I recommend the current "Sensing Places" exhibition at the Royal Academy - one where you can walk through, contribute to, climb and feel the constructions made by 7 different architects form around the world. Modern art is also doing a terrific, if difficult, job of triggering the regeneration of jaded & depressed seaside towns such as Folkestone & Margate.

Surely the missing rubbish could be replaced without resorting to an insurance claim. Better still -could the viewers of this installation not bring their own rubbish thereby interacting with the piece? Of course this often happens anyway but then we call it litter.

I visited the Royal Academy exhibition one year and was horrified to see that a rubbish bag had been left by the door of one of the rooms. And then someone who must have been equally horrified kicked it and it was solid! Apparently it was an exhibit! I have every sympathy with that cleaner

We visited the Pompidou Centre in Paris a couple of years ago where there were two art "installations" that had us in fits, the first looked like rucked up underlay nailed to wall and the second appeared to be loads of tights, suspended from a false ceiling, with what appeared to be tennis balls in the leg and feet parts.

Passing St Andrews Square a couple of days ago, I thought that the Cooncil were trying to grow a crop of ping-pong balls. It was full of little spheres on sticks. Closer examination proved that they were 9,500 small bulbs, an installation entitled "Field of Light".

This photo shows that when they are lit they do look quite nice, probably best from a passing plane or helicopter.

Oh yes, that's pretty, Elegran. It would have been rather good at Christmas!

I really like that Elegran I saw an installation at the V&A a few years ago which was basically a collection of glowing tubes that made sounds as you walked through them. I wasn't impressed when I first saw it, but it was actually very effective and quite addictive.

Has anyone been watching the excellent series 'The Brits Who Built the Modern World'?

I do find some contemporary art hard to fathom.

It must be quite hard to be a creative artist in 21C because photography has taken over so much..we do not need family portraits painted, or paintings of battles, or the stately home etc as they are all recorded easily by cameras.

Art has often been controversial e.g. contemporaries of Turner thought he was mad with his paintings of light etc etc.

I went to the Saatchi gallery a couple of years ago and joined a talk by one of the curators. Listening to her talk about the paintings , that with my first glance I might have said 'I /MyDGS could have done that', I began to appreciate the images more. Some might have otherwise dismissed as 'rubbish' were contexturalised for me and I could appreciate what the artist was trying to communicate/ achieve. others remained rubbish!

The impressionists were condemned as inartistic rubbish at first.

Sometimes I have a think about what I could do artistically that's new and never been thought of before and my mind is a complete blank [nothing new about that though ].

There is nothing new under the sun, Tegan and every new "movement" in art started with someone looking at what was being done already and wondering about a slight variation.

I do like David Hockney though, if we are talking modern artists.

Some art is called phoney art or phart for short.